Our friends over at Pro Football Talk have a whole bunch of good stuff about Colin Kaepernick’s impressive first NFL start for the 49ers last night, but there’s also an interesting little baseball connection.

Back in 2009 when Kaepernick was in college at Nevada the Cubs drafted him in the 43rd round as a pitcher despite his not having played baseball since high school.

As a high school senior in California he threw two no-hitters and had a whole bunch of baseball scholarship offers, but Carrie Muskat of MLB.com has some quotes that made it clear Kaepernick never seriously considered going pro with the Cubs:

Not if football was going to work for me. Out of high school, if I got a football scholarship, that’s what I was going to do. That was part of my scholarship deal with Nevada. I told them, “If I sign here, I won’t enter the Major League Draft.” So, I declined it out of high school and actually got drafted three years later when I hadn’t picked up a baseball in three years.

Kaepernick was a stud quarterback at Nevada and now looks likely to be the 49ers’ long-term starter, whether that begins next week or next season.

Since you mentioned ProFootballTalk, I’d like to just point out how much better the style and community set-up of the boards are over here.

Free speech (for the most part)
No waiting for my comment to be screened
Much more respectable commenters

Imagine rooting for your team, they win a big game, you come here to share in the enjoyment with other fans, only to post a comment and start a discussion, and not see any comments pass through censors for 3 hours!

Well we don’t usually engage in a lot of the crap that the football fans engage in. Y’know, racist stuff, non-stop swearing, misogyny, homophobia etc. So there’s not so much need to filter us. Over on PFT I can see why they gotta screen so much. Used to be like an ‘effin zoo over there. Not so bad these days but that’s because of the 3 hour delay while they read the comments and decide if its SFW, y’see. Anyone who claims that racism is over should see PFT without the 3 hour delay on posting. Jeez.

Any censoring you encounter here is the spam filter. On a busy thread, if you comment a lot on it, the spam filterer gets aggressive with you and holds your comment back after you post a certain number of comments in a 5 to 6 minute window. Now Craig will tell you that it’ll appear eventually, but this does not appear to be the case all of the time. SOMETIMES you get you comment reappearing after a few hours. Mostly you get nothing. Or maybe its just me that gets nothing. I think the spam filter here hates me. It must be pro-pie.

LOL at that comment. You pointed out how some of the football fans at PFT display every kind of hateful prejudice while saying ‘I’m glad we’re not like THOSE PEOPLE’

cur68 - Nov 20, 2012 at 4:50 PM

Nice. A straw man argument. Don’t see those that often

Can you quote where I used the term “THOSE PEOPLE”, please? Or in fact where I say “‘I’m glad we’re not like THOSE PEOPLE’”. What I say is that we don’t do that stuff much here on HBT. This is true. We don’t. What I also say is that they do do that stuff on PFT that’s why the comments are screened. This is a supposition I make as to why comments are screened there. Do you have a better idea about why PFT takes up to 3 hours to post comments?

itsonlyaspeedbump - Nov 20, 2012 at 5:00 PM

The exact line I was referencing was the “WE don’t usually engage in a lot of the crap that THE FOOTBALL FANS engage in.” Honestly, I thought you were making a self-deprecating joke.

Not everybody over there is a mouth breathing knucklehead. And HBT does have a few of their own (you know who) but the community here normally puts them in there place and things move on.

But what I don’t agree with is having a system that encourages reader response, but is selective as to what is published, that my friends is censorship. If something comes to mind that I wish to share with others, whether it’s insightful or humorous, but non-vulgar, or hateful, than don’t censor me.

Just felt like throwing that out, relieves a little frustration, and now I can get back to work.

Thanks for not hatin the Taint.

kellyb9 - Nov 20, 2012 at 3:39 PM

“Much more respectable commenters”

I realize that if I respond to this I will likely prove your point… so I will simply say… Not true.

I think part of the issue with both PFT and CFT is that it is not possible on either site to respond directly to commenters. Here on HBT if you see one of the known trolls, you can either quickly scroll past or play off on threads you like.

I think waiting 6 hours to post people’s comments really lends itself to a spirited exchange of ideas. And also, having some writers who apparently don’t even bother to approve the comments posted to their articles, or delete all the comments from some posters also helps.

And really, is there any better system then manually approving every single comment? It’s not like there is “software” or “programs” that could automatically delete all comments with certain words and then, I don’t know….have some sort of “icon” that people could “click” to “report” offensive comments that end up getting through the aforementioned conceptualized “filter”.

No way. It’ll be years before we see that kind of technology…..now if someone will excuse me, my beeper just went off so I have to find a pay phone to return the call.

Ahhhhh, Grade School Gregg I used to call him, somehow got himself a promotion to the big leagues………I should pay him a visit, he LOVED me =)

tfbuckfutter - Nov 21, 2012 at 11:58 PM

I’m pretty sure that is one of the reasons my comments started getting HEAVY scrutiny.

Jesus, every article with that guy would have MASSIVE errors.

And I’m pretty sure it was him too that would write about a backup Defensive Lineman or something and not bother to mention what position he played. And he would also cite readily available knowledge like “According to NFL.com, Chad Johnson had 1400 receiving yards last year”. I was like “Dude, you don’t have to say ‘Barrack Obama who, according to CNN is the president…..'”

El Bravo - Nov 20, 2012 at 1:30 PM

“Kaepernick was a stud quarterback at Nevada and now looks likely to be the 49ers’ long-term starter, whether that begins next week or next season.”

Says who? That’s pure speculation, brah. Sure Harbaugh says he’ll go with the “hot hand” but that doesn’t mean jack. It certainly means nothing about next season. Way too many questions must be answered first. One awesome start does not a great QB make.

That’s really where this is likely headed. They can get quite a bit for either QB in a transaction after this season I think. I expect to see something along those lines. I do NOT expect them to move either this season and do NOT expect Alex to be benched during his best season, a 70% completion percentage and the third-highest passer rating.

El Bravo - Nov 20, 2012 at 2:09 PM

Hahaha calling out Gleezy awards you thumbs downs in droves apparently. Doesn’t make my comment any less true.

LOL, they’re all desperate, look at C-squared over there musing on some guy’s name… Meanwhile, Twitter is crazy with all the guys being dropped and added to the 40-man rosters before the deadline tonight. So it’s not like there’s no baseball news, maybe more like TOO MUCH news, most of it meaningless… but maybe not all meaning less?

Alex Smith currently has the 3rd highest QB rating in the NFL. I’d say he’s a decent part of why they’re winning this season. He’s been accurate and hasn’t turned the ball over much. He complete 25 of his last 27 passes before getting injured.

On the other hand, holy crap does Kaepernick bring a ton of athleticism and a huge arm. He looked really good last night

As a 49er fan, this is the kind of QB problem I don’t mind having. I expect to see both of them on the field quite a bit. Also look for some fun trickery. For example, I saw a play like a month ago where Harbaugh brought Kaep in for some Wildcat stuff, then when Smith came back, Kaep trotted ALMOST all the way off the field, stopping and standing about a yard in play right at the line of scrimmage as the 9ers lined up. That’s a thing you rarely see outside of youth football. The other team called a timeout – I wasn’t sure if they sniffed out what was happening or called a timeout for something else, and the announcers never mentioned it.

I was watching a Nevada game about 3-4 years ago when he was on the team, and the announcer made a nice crack at the Cubs for drafting a player who doesn’t play baseball. Something along the lines of “Tells you about the state of baseball for the Cubs”, good stuff. He defended it by saying he was a south sider.

Yeah, wouldn’t want to throw away one of those valuable 43rd round draft picks. About the part of the draft where the groundskeeper son gets a courtesy draft. Reminds me of when the Rockies grabbed Mike Vick, who if I remember right had only played a year or two of HS baseball. You have to find ways to keep yourself entertained in a 50 round draft.

If it is a controversy, it sure sounds good to me. I have never been a Smith fan, I guess because he made me feel uneasy as I watched the niners…It was like waiting for the roof to fall in everytime he set up in the pocket….He didn’t seem so much in control and a noodle arm for 5 yard passes which would boost anyone’s completion percentage….

Kaepernick hadn’t impressed me this year, other than a very good ability to run and arm… When he dropped that pass over the two dbs to Williams, I was impressed. The dude had body language conveyed like an seasoned pro. One game, heck yeah, I was impressed… On MNF, he was the star of that bear wipeout…

I don’t see a controversy, but I do see a coach that definitely knows what he is doing…